I've been a quiet blogger lately

I'm not sure I'm cut out for this blogging thing. I guess I don't know what I think of it yet. I think I'm too scared that I'm going to say something that will come back to haunt me in the future. Maybe I'll say something that will impact my ability to get a job in the future, or maybe I'll say something that will hurt the feelings of longtime friends or my family.

At any rate, I look at this blog, and I'm paralyzed. I don't know what is okay to write and what's off limits. It's a wierd forum, one that is open to the world but so very personal at the same time. It's like saying "Dear Diary ... PS Hello New York City." You know? Anyone in the world could stumble across this message, future bosses, future friends, future enemies (as if anyone could hate me : P ). And what will they think of me based on these words?

I'm reading a book right now that's at least partially about silences and finding the silences in your writing. It's a book by Julie Jung called Revisionary Rhetoric, Feminist Pedagogy, and Multigenre Texts. First off, it's a cool book because it cites and quotes some very good friends of mine. What's up Marie Moeller! Howdy Lori O : ) Hey Teryn. But I think the coolest thing is that it clearly articulates something about silences that I wasn't really getting before, even though I took a course with Julie Jung where we examined our silences.

We did this exercise in that class where we journaled about our silences, which you reading this blog will most likely NEVER hear about. Because they do the things that I'm most worried about above. At any rate, I think that I journaled about times when I was silenced, as in times when I didn't have the courage to speak out. These were times when what I had to say went against the status quo and might have angered those listening to the conversation or times when I was worried that what I would say would make me sound stupid. With me these types of silences happen quite frequently. I'm kind of a quiet and shy guy, and I avoid confrontation like I avoid a salad bar after watching someone hack up a lung all over the sneeze guard.

But after reading through Jung's book, I think I've come to realize I was approaching the assignment from the wrong sort of angle. Instead of documenting times when I was afraid to speak out, I should have been filling in the gaps in my writing, finding spots in my writing where the actual writing didn't tell the whole story. In doing so, I could begin to examine why some of the story was left untold. Those are the most powerful silences, the ones where you have the need or the impetus to write about an issue or an event and you deliberately avoid a certain aspect of that issue or event because to voice it would be uncomfortable.

It brings me to some advice from another professor of mine (Go Kim Stone!), that we should "mind the gaps." So I guess you could say that writing is like riding the tube in London. Always be aware of what you're avoiding.

So anyway, if you're interested in Feminism, teaching, or writing, go pick up Julie's book. It's a good read.

Until next time,
Brad

A Word's Worth

I have this calendar that each day offers up a word from the English language that has gone out of style. It's kind of interesting to take a look at the way that English has evolved based on the changes in culture and the needs of the language's users. Here are some of my favorites so far.

• Awaped: Made a fool of
• Flueologist: Chimney-sweep, akin to Rat-operator.
• Verbarian: An inventor or coiner of words
• Yabbock: A talkative person
• Goles: Foolish and vulgar evasions of profane oaths
• Flouse: To play in the water
• Englottogaster: a ventriloquist
• Prosodist: One who understands prosody and the laws of versification
• Metromania: A mania for writing poetry
• Fremmed: Strange or foreign
• Smeerkin: The sweetest of all kisses
• Parechasis: A rambing digression in Rhetoric

Taken from the Forgotten English Calendar by Jeffrey Kacirk.

Looking Back East

It's a hazy day here in Wenatchee. Grit-gray smoke from the north hangs over Badger Mountain so that the sky is not quite blue but rather a light shale. Wild fires. Not 50 miles away, acres of land are burning, the smoke limiting the view to no more than 2 or 3 miles up the Columbia Valley.

This time of year, there's always smoke somewhere on the horizon. It's hot and dry. Every small plant that isn't watered regularly is dead so that fires spread quickly.

Since I moved here a year ago, there have been five fires close enough that I could see the smoke from our balcony. There was one where I could see the flames on the mountains to the east of us. It's an odd feeling for someone from Illinois, who grew up in corn and soybean fields. This time of year in Illinois, you could douse plants in gasoline and light them, and you wouldn't burn more than an acre, probably.

I guess I miss Illinois. It's an odd thing to say living here in the moutains, where you could potentially go skiing and water skiing on the same day in late spring and late fall. The surrounding mountains offer so many different beautiful views, especially when they are compared to the plain old Plains. And with the second cleanest lake in the country not far away, it's hard to yearn for the muddy Mississippi.

But there are small things that I miss, like being able to watch every Cubs game on TV and humidity. Humidity! It's so damn dry here. And of course there are friends and family in Illinois that I don't get to see often enough.

Living here, though is an experience I wouldn't trade for anything. It's a beautiful place, and we are so close to some of the most beautiful terrain in the country. I've always loved nature and being outdoors. Maybe I can use this blog to share some of our trips into the mountains. We'll see, I guess.

Best,
Brad

What the hell is a cogiscape???

I guess you could say that this blog is the search for an answer to the following questions:

What the hell is a cogiscape?
What does it look like?
Do you create it, or is it already there?
How do you read one?

The answer, at least for right now, is that I don't know what a cogiscape is. But I'm going to do my best to create one or stumble across it in my mind, if it already exists up there. I guess what I'm attempting to do here is share bits and pieces of my mind, in order to start to understand my own thinking. And you're invited to journey with me, if you'd like. Think of this blog as a map for my mind and us as imaginative travellers. And maybe if I'm lucky, this blog will tell me where life's journey is taking me. At any rate, the trip will be fun for me (and I hope for you).